studiojmm
Mouseketeer
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2017
My daughter (12) and I are bringing my parents (nearly 80) to WDW Mon-Sat, Dec 9-14 (Sat is just a travel day since our flight is mid-morning). We initially booked a condo offsite and planned to rent a car (we have annual passes, so parking is free). I'm rethinking this.
I'm considering the following options:
Transportation - biggest one. Disney busses mean we can come and go from the park in pairs if DD wants to rope drop or stay late and my parents don't. We could add my mother as a driver on the rental car and Uber/Lyft if we split up, but we'd need to coordinate arrival to take advantage of AP free parking. No idea how much we'll do this. The trip is more about spending time with my parents than hitting the attractions so we might opt for keeping the same park schedule and using the pool more if we are back at the resort. Love the ease of Magic Express, not looking forward to experiencing Disney parking lots (never have, so maybe they aren't so bad but I'm generally a public transit person at home).
Space / comfort - 2nd biggest consideration. I'm not sure sharing a room with my parents for 5 nights is a good idea. That's why I've reserved two rooms at Pop (they aren't big). If we booked a place with only one room, in addition to enough space not to trip over each other, there would have to be other spaces to escape to - lounges or business centers where I could grab a morning coffee and hang out for a bit. B Resort advertises those kind of spaces...
"Kitchen" - DD and I are both vegetarian and tend to do a lot of packed lunches in the parks. We also tend to eat in the room in the morning (vegetarian friendly protein isn't common at restaurant breakfasts). We are then free to snack as we wish in the park and some days do a sit-down meal. This makes us happier from a health and budget perspective. My parents are actually not big eaters and might happily carry a sandwich in addition to eating a decent breakfast and dinner. A full kitchen is not necessary, but fridge + somewhere to heat stuff up is (microwave in dining hall is sufficient).
60 day FP+ - meh? We just came back from 6 days onsite and didn't do FOP or SDD because my DD didn't care enough to bother. We could have done either at rope drop. We even had and cancelled a FP+ for FOP because we didn't want to stay at AK that afternoon. I like FOP and it might be fun for my mom. I think she'd also enjoy SDMT, but it's not a deal breaker if we don't do it. However, we tend to travel off-peak (touring plans rated several of our park days as 1 or 2 on crowd level) and can do everything we care about without much fuss. We've been in December before, but this time we are going slightly closer to the holidays. TP is predicting crowd levels of 4-7 for this trip, which is still pretty moderate.
Cost - Pop will cost us quite a bit more than the condo + car because of the 2nd room (it's the same or slightly cheaper with only 1 room). Pop also means spending money on coffee/soda since I do not care for the results of the Pop coffee makers (we will not be getting a dining plan). The condo will charge us $6 per day for every device we connect to the wifi after the first two (any party with 4 adults travel with only two wifi devices anymore?).
Thoughts? Feedback on B Resort or recommendations for DS hotels with these considerations in mind? Thanks.
I'm considering the following options:
- No change. Offsite condo + car;
- Pop Century, no car - was checking last week and stumbled upon two rooms with a good annual pass discount;
- Disney Springs resort, no car - if there are any that make sense for reserving a single room.
Transportation - biggest one. Disney busses mean we can come and go from the park in pairs if DD wants to rope drop or stay late and my parents don't. We could add my mother as a driver on the rental car and Uber/Lyft if we split up, but we'd need to coordinate arrival to take advantage of AP free parking. No idea how much we'll do this. The trip is more about spending time with my parents than hitting the attractions so we might opt for keeping the same park schedule and using the pool more if we are back at the resort. Love the ease of Magic Express, not looking forward to experiencing Disney parking lots (never have, so maybe they aren't so bad but I'm generally a public transit person at home).
Space / comfort - 2nd biggest consideration. I'm not sure sharing a room with my parents for 5 nights is a good idea. That's why I've reserved two rooms at Pop (they aren't big). If we booked a place with only one room, in addition to enough space not to trip over each other, there would have to be other spaces to escape to - lounges or business centers where I could grab a morning coffee and hang out for a bit. B Resort advertises those kind of spaces...
"Kitchen" - DD and I are both vegetarian and tend to do a lot of packed lunches in the parks. We also tend to eat in the room in the morning (vegetarian friendly protein isn't common at restaurant breakfasts). We are then free to snack as we wish in the park and some days do a sit-down meal. This makes us happier from a health and budget perspective. My parents are actually not big eaters and might happily carry a sandwich in addition to eating a decent breakfast and dinner. A full kitchen is not necessary, but fridge + somewhere to heat stuff up is (microwave in dining hall is sufficient).
60 day FP+ - meh? We just came back from 6 days onsite and didn't do FOP or SDD because my DD didn't care enough to bother. We could have done either at rope drop. We even had and cancelled a FP+ for FOP because we didn't want to stay at AK that afternoon. I like FOP and it might be fun for my mom. I think she'd also enjoy SDMT, but it's not a deal breaker if we don't do it. However, we tend to travel off-peak (touring plans rated several of our park days as 1 or 2 on crowd level) and can do everything we care about without much fuss. We've been in December before, but this time we are going slightly closer to the holidays. TP is predicting crowd levels of 4-7 for this trip, which is still pretty moderate.
Cost - Pop will cost us quite a bit more than the condo + car because of the 2nd room (it's the same or slightly cheaper with only 1 room). Pop also means spending money on coffee/soda since I do not care for the results of the Pop coffee makers (we will not be getting a dining plan). The condo will charge us $6 per day for every device we connect to the wifi after the first two (any party with 4 adults travel with only two wifi devices anymore?).
Thoughts? Feedback on B Resort or recommendations for DS hotels with these considerations in mind? Thanks.
